Part 11
“To have passed a thousand and more days, a thousand and more nights in the wilderness with a great longing in my heart in some way to grasp and make my own all the splendour I have seen and all its charm; to have again and again delighted in the beauty of the Nyíka: this does not make me capable of reproducing it. And even if after many decades of years I could fully comprehend it, I should never succeed in reproducing it in its full significance and bringing it home to the minds of those who have never looked upon it with their own eyes.”
So runs a passage in my diary.
Descriptions of things similar to those that I have told of in inadequate words in these slight sketches of the Nyíka district of East Africa may be read of other regions of our earth. The life and activity of the Arctic fauna, of those gigantic creatures of to-day, the whales, and of the Polar bears, the musk oxen, the wild reindeer, the walruses, the seals--those most sagacious creatures--and the life of many other animal forms--all these together are waiting for the hand that will describe them in word and picture and put on enduring record for all time this changing life. Thus only will a new existence be given to those forms of life for which the sentence “Vae Victis!” has gone forth.
May the master soon appear who will be able to give us a noble and true picture of the East African Nyíka in all its vast proportions. For, as the night is now descending on the wilderness, so will an everlasting night soon come down upon all the life and movement that I have tried so inadequately to describe in merest outline.
About a century ago the “Twilight of the Gods” (_Götterdämmerung_) began for all the wild life of the Cape region of South Africa. Even before these hundred years had run out it was ended; this abundant flood of life had disappeared....
VII
The Voices of the Wilderness
The German sportsman knows well the mysterious charm that speaks to the listener, when in the woods in spring he hears the note of the woodcock and the cry of the ptarmigan, and when in autumn he hears the call of the stag to its mate. It must be that the listener is subject to some atavistic influence, some impulse rooted in the dim past now quickening into life.
Let him who understands this charm follow me through the equatorial wilderness, and listen with me to the music of songs and notes that we may call the language of the Nyíka. We shall hear it there on every side, by day and by night. True, fully to understand this language one should have King Solomon’s magic power, which made its possessor understand the speech of animals, or like Siegfried have dipped one’s hand in the blood of the dragon, and thus have acquired the gift of holding converse with the birds.
This much is certain, in the wildernesses of Africa this primeval language is still to be heard. In our hunting grounds at home the voices of the aurochs, the bison, the ibex, the bear, the lynx, and the wolf have been silenced, and many other voices that have belonged to the wild open country since primeval days have all but died away. I have indeed learned to understand only a few words of this language of the wilderness, though I have heard thousands of its sounds. But I may be able to tell something about it.
What a strong and deep impression this world of sound makes upon the traveller at so many hours of the day and night! Every region, every different kind of country has its own characteristic harmony. One does not always hear it--it depends upon the season of the year and the time of the day, on the changes of weather, and much else. But when one has become even to some small extent familiar and conversant with these various voices, one enjoys this music-language Of the Nyíka with a sense of deep delight and ever growing understanding. Sometimes it is most difficult to find out the names of the individual speakers. Often they keep very quiet; they seem to be like great vocalists on tour: they appear suddenly, and then disappear again for a long time, without letting one see any more of them. Then the traveller may often listen long, in vain, for the singer--gone without leaving a trace behind. But it is not only the soloists that charm us. There is also the combined effect of all the voices of nature uniting in one vast impressive chorus. This has made such an impression upon me that I shall try, so far as my limited powers permit, to describe it to the reader. This musical language of the wilderness is in itself powerful, rich and impressive, but all this in a still greater degree for him who, observing things with the eyes of a seer, knows many of the voices that resound in it will not be heard much longer. Although for long, long ages, through hundreds of thousands of years, this tumult of sound has been heard, these voices, or many of them, will soon be silent victims of civilisation! They are going, and with them many of the euphonious names of places with which the natives have distinguished every spot, but which the Europeans, as they penetrate into the country, feel themselves obliged to change.
It may seem that I myself am not quite guiltless of such misdeeds. It is true that I named an island, that resort of the wild buffaloes in the Pangani River, “Heck Island,” in honour of Professor Ludwig Heck. But the island had till then no name whatever. One feels sad, on glancing over the map of Africa, to note the degradation of so many old traditional names, which is in no way justified, and is a sign of the hasty and violent introduction of civilised life. “The Boers are not people who think much about natural history,” says a writer somewhere. And in fact, through their agency, the euphonious names of the various wild species of South Africa are now to a great extent already obsolete. They hastily gave vulgar-sounding names of their own to the wild animals.[39] Thus the oryx antelope became the “gemsbock,” and the cow-antelope, because it was tenacious of life and difficult to kill, the “hartebeest.” The gnu, on account of its wildness, was called the “wildebeest,” the bustard the, “pauw,”[40] the hyena the “wolf,” and the giraffe--incredible though, it may seem--the “kameel”! Hand in hand with this went the changing of place-names: so we read of “Hartebeests Fontein,” “Olifants River,” “Kameeldoorn,” “Zwartkop,” and we have a whole series of unpleasant, and sometimes utterly ugly names by the introduction of which the beautiful aboriginal names of various places have become obsolete. Thus not only do the primitive inhabitants of the land disappear, but their names, too, are blown away upon the wind.
Countless are the voices that resound by day in the Nyíka. But by night these voices speak still more mysteriously and wonderfully to him who listens to them, bringing him into still closer union with nature. From the multitude of these voices I choose a few only.
Old memories come back to me! It is in the year 1896. I have just landed, and am sitting in my night shooting-encampment by an inlet of the sea near Dar-es-Salaam. A concert of the voices of nocturnal birds mingles with the sharp buzz of the mosquitoes. Again and again one hears a strange cry. Unspeakably sad and monotonous, this peculiar sound rings out over the waters of the inlet; in the distance a changing answer comes back in response to it.
I did not then suspect _that it would take me nearly a year_ to be absolutely certain that this sound was uttered by an extremely shy and restless kind of cuckoo!
This sound of the African night always made the strongest impression upon me, and remains indelibly in my memory. All that one heard from near at hand, or from the distance miles away, had its origin not in man’s voice or in human activity of any kind, but most come from birds and beasts to a great extent unknown to us. One had to interpret, to conjecture, to build up theories. Often one struck upon the correct solution. But often enough, too, the interpretation one accepted proved to be false, and then one’s anxiety to find out the true solution, aroused anew, was doubly keen. The first time I heard it, I had no difficulty in interpreting for myself the cry of the monkeys harassed in the night by leopards, a screaming of a kind one cannot easily forget, plainly expressing the greatest terror. The first time one heard the neighing of the herds of zebras it was much more difficult to recognise the sound, and the gobbling cry of the ostrich had at first a still stranger effect. But as soon as I had heard the voice of the zebras a few times, it was clear to me that the extinct _quagga_ of South Africa must have derived its name from its cry. If one puts the accent on the second syllable, and pronounces the _g_ softly and deep in the throat, one has, as one repeats it, a wonderful reproduction of the cry of the zebra as I heard it myself.[41]
What a pity that all this cannot be put on permanent record by some such apparatus as a gigantic phonograph! But unfortunately we are still a long way from such a possibility.
No one will be surprised at my keeping specially in mind that endlessly melancholy cry of the cuckoo in the darkness. How lonely and empty our German woodlands would seem without the cuckoo and the cuckoo cry! As a matter of fact the African primeval forest _never_ hears the same cry that has become so clear to ourselves. Our cuckoo, migrating in a few days all the way from the north to the equator, flies in restless haste through wood and plain, but _he is silent_. His cry is heard only in our country at home. But in the East Africa district of Pori, amongst many other cries those of two species of cuckoo are heard in rivalry. These are the sickle cuckoo--the “Tipi-tipi” of the Swahili--a reddish-brown fellow that flutters in heavy flight everywhere about the bush, the reedy bogs and hill-slopes; and the solitary cuckoo (_Cuculus solitarius_, Step.), about whose cry I was for a long time mistaken. The unceasing, low cry of the former, the sickle cuckoo, if it is heard even a few times, can never again be forgotten. It sounds like--“Dut-dút--dududu--dut-dút.” One hears it by day and also in the darkest night, contrasting strongly with the sharply defined, clear note of our European cuckoo, though the latter listens in silence to the cry of his cousins all through the winter under the equator. This cry seems to me, with its low, dull, softly prolonged tones--so different from the louder cry of its northern relative--to be quite in keeping with its mysterious tropical home. For the sickle cuckoo knows all its deepest mysteries, and no bird ranges so unweariedly through the densest thickets and over the most inaccessible regions. In the most hidden, solitary, and unknown spots[42] it would come fluttering up from the ground at my feet, often startling me. It seemed to me as if the bird wanted to call my attention to newly discovered mysteries, as its “Dut-dút--dududu--dut-dút” came sounding to me, now here, now there, low, soft and melodious, by day under the brooding noonday heat, and just the same in the midnight hours.
At night, too, he is seconded, as I have already mentioned, by his more timid cousin, with an ever repeated “Kí-kü-kü--kí-kü-kü,” that resounds monotonously in the distance.
There is a strange charm in continually hearing these voices again and again, without knowing the little singers; and a triumph at last in making out which they are.
“During a sleepless night,” said Richard Wagner, “I once went out upon the balcony of my window on the Grand Canal at Venice. As if in a deep dream the legend-haunted city of the lagoons lay spread out before me under the darkness. Out of the soundless silence there came the loud call of a gondolier waking up just then on his boat ... then from the farthest distance the same call answered back along the dark canal; I recognised the old, melancholy, melodious sounds, doubtless as old as the canals of Venice and their people. After a solemn pause the far-sounding dialogue at last began, and it seemed to me to melt into harmony, till the notes heard close at hand and coming more softly from afar died away as sleep came back to me again.”
Who could describe in such noble words the impression made upon our minds by the spell of the sounds and songs of the nocturnal wildness, and all its strange and beautiful music? All that at first is strange there, and even alarming, comes gradually to be something one loves intimately. Shall I ever be able to listen to it all again? Who knows? Let me try then to make some record of what I have so often heard, and in these few sentences attempt to give some faint echo of these once familiar voices.
We are in the midst of the great forest. Giant podocarpus and juniper trunks rise up towards the sky. It is cool and shady all around us here; we breathe a moist, and not unfrequently a musty air. The sunlight plays only upon the tops of these giants of the primeval woods, and can but scantily illumine the almost bare ground below them, sending here and there shimmering, dancing rays of light amongst the tree-trunks. High overhead the giants arch their branches, interlacing them in a vast living roof of green. Only where clearings make a break in the mass of trees, a sea of light floods all the ground--a flood of light so strong that our eyes, accustomed to the obscurity, the mysterious semi-darkness of the forest, are dazzled, and there comes to our minds involuntarily recollections of old Bible pictures, in which such floods of light are shown streaming down from heaven to earth. A confusion of trees, creepers and undergrowth, with amidst it uprooted tree-trunks lying mouldering away; the earth black, and often marshy; no road or way far and wide, but only here and there the tracks and beaten paths made by the elephants and rhinoceroses that have roamed the old forest since primeval times.
Deep silence all around. If the traveller stands still and holds his breath, this silence seems to weigh down upon the soul with a weird force. At such moments it is as though some vague disaster threatened, or something wicked and dangerous were creeping around unseen.
Suddenly, a squealing and chattering. There is a scurry up and down the tree-trunks, and again there is a strange sound of spitting and growling. Just now there had come over us a feeling such as is expressed in Böcklin’s[43] masterly picture, directly inspired by nature, _Schweigen des Waldes_ (the “Silence of the Forest”). We had almost expected each moment that legends set before us by the power of his genius would here become realities; we felt that here one might surprise nymphs and dryads. The spell is soon broken. The gnomes of the primeval forest, the tree-climbing hyraxes, have scared away the silence. Wonderful to say, these dwarfish _hoofed animals_, the nearest still surviving relatives of the rhinoceros, are here scrambling up and down on the trunks of the venerable trees.
From all sides, from every spot, every direction, there resound the same cries, and again there is silence all around us. Here, far in the depths of the primeval forest, the bird world seems to have no home. But hark! I hear a curious chirping, and I notice on a bare bough above me one of the most gloriously coloured of African birds, the banded trogon (_Heterotrogon vittatum_, Shell.), which, uttering a most peculiar sound, is carrying on its characteristic sport--flapping its beautiful wings.
Then loud-sounding trumpet-like notes break on the ear. We hear a rushing in the air, and big hornbills with their huge beaks come sailing, as I judge by their cries, through the air, and alight on the top of a giant juniper (_Juniperus procera_). They, too, fly away after awhile; their trumpeting, dies away in the distance, and again there is silence all around. Their voices and that of the brightly coloured helmet-bird give to the primeval forest of Africa a strange charm that is all its own.
But now there suddenly breaks forth a remarkable sound, rising and again falling as I listen, a strange music of a most peculiar kind. It is the chatter of the colobus monkeys, a sound that cannot be described in words. A party of these wonderful creatures seems to be in good humour, for their song comes to me in chorus unceasingly, and in rising strength. “Murúh-murúh-murúh-rrrrrrmúh rrrrrrmúh-murúh quoi-quo-quo-quo-rrrr,” it sounds, now swelling strongly out, now gently dying away. These, too, are doomed to death, who now are letting us hear their primitive song, that in our days may so easily be their death-song; for these monkeys are keenly hunted for the sake of their beautiful fur, and their song often betrays them to the hunter, eager for their spoils. Some poisoned darts, which I find here with points as sharp as needles, and which were once shot with a bad aim at the little monkeys, are evidence enough of this.
And again I hear the great wood ringing and echoing with the countless cries of birds. There was a time, too, when the call of millions of the now all but extinct passenger pigeon resounded in North America; so, too--and of this I have no doubt--the cooing of the ringdoves was heard repeated by thousands of birds in our beech and oak woods at home when the acorns and beech-nuts were in season.
On the lonely uninhabited western slopes of the highest giant mountain of the German possessions, Mount Kilimanjaro, certain forest fruits flourish in profusion. There is heard on every side a strong, sweet-sounding dove-note, like that of our ringdove. A handsome large species of wood-pigeon (_Columba aquatrix_, Tem.) has gathered in hundreds of thousands. The rustle of their wings, as they rise or come down in great flocks,mingles with their beautiful calls and cries; the ear can hear nothing else. Voice, form, and movement so strongly remind one of our own ringdoves that one feels carried away to far-off, familiar scenes, and the illusion is helped by the character of the Kilimanjaro landscape, which in certain of the higher regions has less of a tropical than of a northern aspect. How strange it is; the cry of this bird all at once transports the traveller to his own land! Truly _there is a magic in sound_. With the poorest appliances, the slightest equipment, the creative fancy can in a moment build a bridge to the Fatherland. The call of this beautiful dove sounding here on every side, its love-inspired circling high in air above the tops of the giants of the primeval forest, surrounds it with a dream-picture, and makes me suddenly breathe the air of the beech woods. I am in the northern woods in springtime; cool and fragrant the northern air blows round me. But ah! thousands of miles of land and sea divide me from all that, and cool reflective reason counts only on the possibility, not the certainty, of my ever seeing my native land again.
And yet this beautiful picture has a strengthening and consoling influence. It drives away the trouble of home-sickness--a dismal thing!
I can hear many other voices besides these in the primeval forest. But those that impress themselves in the most completely enduring way on the memory are the strange cry of the tree-hyrax, the peculiar note of the hornbills, that calling of the doves, the remarkable chorus of song of the ‘Mbega monkeys, strange beyond all description, and the trumpeting of the lord of the primeval forest, the elephant.
Another tone-picture--an early morning at a drinking-place in the desert. One could feel the cold in the night, but the quick coming warmth of the equatorial sun’s rays has soon roused the animal world to active life. There is the cry and call of the francolins on all sides. But the chief part in this early concert is taken by the thousands of turtle-doves, flying from all directions to the water. Everywhere a murmuring and cooing, that the Masai are able to re-echo so incomparably in the name of the turtle-dove in their language--“‘Ndurgulyu.” As an accompaniment to this, there is the rustling and wing-clapping of all the feathered visitors at the water. Towards evening, the air in the neighbourhood of a much-visited drinking-place is literally filled with these beautiful and swift-winged birds. The rustling and beating of their wings in rapid flight makes in itself a concert. I not unfrequently came upon places that bore the name of the “Doves’ water,” or the “Doves’ resting-place.” All the various voices of the many species of doves that find a home in the Nyíka resound again in the traveller’s ears for years after. Whether it be the strange voice of the parrot-pigeon, that ushers in the concert with a hollow “Kruh-kruh” and follows it up with some remarkable notes, or the melancholy cry of the little steel-spotted pigeon that comes to us from the thickets, or the strong, loud-sounding love-notes of the already-mentioned _Columba aquatrix_, Tem., so like our ringdove, or, above all, the familiar sweet voices of the many small kinds of turtle-doves--all these sounds, the rustling and fluttering and beating of wings, the living, moving picture presented by all these beautiful birds, belong inseparably to the essence and being of the Nyíka. When the turtle-doves greet the morning with their soft cooing, their call is answered from afar by strange guttural tones borne swiftly through the air, sounding, like “Gle-glé-lágak-glé-ága-ága,” from the velt-fowl hurrying like themselves to the water. Brehm, in his _Leben der Vögel_, has already raised a poetical monument to them made up of beautiful lines. But I could not picture to myself the morning concert of the bird world in the Nyíka without the strange cry of the sand-fowl and the cooing of the doves, and the peculiar sound of the beating wings of the velt-fowl as they rise in scattered flight from their resting-places,--a sound that impresses itself strongly and distinctly on the ear, more than that of any other bird I know, as the “Kláck-kláck-kláck” of the rising woodcock strikes the ear of the sportsman in Germany.
The wonderful flight of the velt-fowl, their calls and cries, their hurry and bustle, afforded me ever new interest. It always seemed to me as though the wide wilderness here sent out its lovingly guarded favourite children as envoys, with the mission of making it known that even now, in this dull, barren time, life has not died out even in the most remote deserts. So I see and hear them once more in fancy, beautiful, timid, and full of the joy of life. It is thus their countless millions enliven the wastes of Africa, as well as the endless tundra marshes of Asia.
Deep, long-drawn-out notes, like those of musical glasses, ring in my ears. The brooding noonday heat is round me. The sun is in the zenith, and hardly another sound is to be heard all around. The wilderness lies before me in the hot glowing sunlight as if dead. My weary bearers have given themselves up to a dozing sleep, at the place where I have at last halted, after a march of many hours with a few companions.